6 AM Pacific

My 2008 Wish “Less”

A very happy new year to all my readers. May you and your loved ones have a joyful 2008.

Wish lists are neat things. Unlike new year resolutions, they involve no effort on your part. And unlike predictions for the new year, you can’t be wrong about them. So I thought I would draw up a wish list and share it with my readers. Perhaps they could then add their own candidates for the wish list and then we could have a reality TV show where people from around India SMS (at premium rates) their wish list candidates and a panel of distinguished judges help us short list ten WLCs (Wish List Candidates) which we then take to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who tells us that he can do nothing about them unless Prakash Karat and Sonia Gandhi agree on each one of them.

Seemed like an exercise in futility so I decided not to do a wish list. Instead here is a “Wish Less”. It is based upon the premise that we already have too much of everything. More »

I Hope You are Enjoying This!

I normally don’t post links if I don’t have anything to add to the matter. But this one is just so funny that I will.

Business Standard’s Kishore Singh wrote a review (here) of a book called “Entry From Backside Only” by Binoo John. An excerpt from the review

Now I am growing up in too many small places as Father is on transfer, and so I am not khit-pit in English in weigh these hi-fi people in Bombay and Delhi our, but I am knowing that this Mr John, he is kraking these jokes about small town people who are not so well knowing the language. At first, I am enjoying and laufing and saying, Oh, this Mr John, he is telling good-good jokes. But then he is saying that this is not write way to right English, and that this is Indian-English, which is not true English, and I am thinking perhaps he is CIA foreign hand, he is wishing to disallocate this great country.

Need I say more? If you grew up in India, go read the review, it’ll cheer you up.

I salute Kishore Singh. I wish I could write like that!

Another Ladoo for my Ladla

This trip, for some reason, I have been noticing a lot more obesity in India. From the just overweight to the can’t-get-out-of-their-airline-seat-themselves obese. Sedentary lifestyles have something to do with this, of course, but I sense that there is another major factor at work here - an Indian mother’s love. More »

Of Mice and Men

Researchers at the University of Virginia have studied the effects of jet lag on mice and the news is not good for us flatworld types. We may be looking at prematurely flat-lining, so be sure to write your wills.
More »

My Secret Starbucks Name

One of the many challenges facing the global executive is the important task of pronouncing and spelling foreign names. Indians in the US do face some difficulty with American names – a strong Mallu accent can change a ‘John’ to a ‘Joan’ for instance – but in general they do fine. American first names are designed to be simple. The ones that aren’t, are mercilessly shortened to nicknames. I know many Tims, but no Timothys.

Americans pronouncing Indian names is an entirely different matter. More »